The History Behind Chinese Games: Foreword

The foreword to THE HISTORY BEHIND CHINESE GAMES, the author's unfinished second book, by BBKinG (Liu Yang). Translated from the Chinese original: 中国游戏幕后史 前言

First published in the author's Zhihu column on September 9, 2014: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/19845247

This translation was reviewed against the Chinese original on August 1, 2026. If you spot a mistranslation, a wrong name, or a factual error, please open an issue or send a pull request.

In 2013, home for the Lunar New Year and unable to sit still, I started writing THE HISTORY BEHIND CHINESE ESPORTS. At first I only meant to put something on the table that others might build on, to set down a record of our youth, a shared memory for people in esports.

Around the tenth chapter, a reader left a comment. What you are writing, he said, is a miniature of an era, and it marks the point where esports culture took shape.

His words made me look at my own writing again, and they gave me a sense of duty.

So I began adding far more interviews. Travelling for work around the country, I took every chance to meet the older hands of the industry, wherever they lived.

A year and a half has gone by. I have interviewed more than 50 people in the industry and written more than 300,000 characters, covering the media, event operations, casters, players, game operators, developers, club managers, sponsors, hardware manufacturers, leagues and every other side of esports. Much of what I heard was first-hand testimony from behind the scenes, about things I had only ever heard of and never taken part in.

The more of those stories I heard, the more I saw how deeply the history behind Chinese esports overlaps with the history behind Chinese games. Many of the people who now form the backbone of Chinese game companies started out in esports. They carried an esports way of thinking into the games industry, worked there for years, and brought plenty of new thinking back to esports. Those stories could probably never be told in full inside a book framed around esports alone.

And so another idea took hold.

Why not widen this behind the scenes history to the much larger world of games, trace the outline of the history behind Chinese games, and give esports a wider frame and more to draw on?

That is how the new column, THE HISTORY BEHIND CHINESE GAMES, came about.

To be honest, just as when I first started the esports history, I have no idea how far this column will get, and I know there are bound to be errors and gaps. But I am setting out in the same spirit, hoping to put something on the table that others can build on, to record the memories of our youth, and to enjoy the new stories and the new journey together with all of you.

To the veterans of the games industry and to my readers: just call me Xiao Liu, little Liu... ^^